


The Ring of Fire, Book One: The Riding of the Grey Posse

by Politesse



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Politesse/pseuds/Politesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings as a mythology for his Britain. And hey, he did a good job! But here on the other side of the pond, we've got our own special kind of tall tale. This is the story of Old Bill Bowen, his curious ring, and everything that happened after. Set more in the legendary Old West than the real one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue: An Unexpected Journey

Up in the hills, but under the mountain, there lived a hatshaper. At least, so he described himself. Certainly, he did make a fine hat, and would sell you a fine wide brim for far less than its value at the May Fair. Lovely felt and leather things, hats to keep the June sun off your brow or the August monsoons and gullywashers from drenching you. Old Bill Bowen was a skilled craftsman by all accounts. Still, it was also a fact well-known in Riverton that he did not win his estimable fortune by haberdashery alone. The Bowens had always been well-off, and had kept a handsome estate under the mountain since the founding of the town in distant memory. They were a queer folk, and there was a special queerness that struck at least once a generation, carrying one them off to some uncommon destiny. The year our story began, it did not fail to strike a Bowen, though it bypassed the eldest daughter (Libby, a bit of a firebrand but no adventurer) and surprised everyone by carrying off her quiet younger brother, Billy. He was not yet called Old Bill at the time, for he was newly come into the estate, and most thought him the quiet, conservative ranching type that made up most of Riverton. It came as a shock, therefore, when Billy displayed a sudden penchant for traveling, that is, within a single morning. The old-timers down in the tavern still recall with no small amount of surprise and mystification the day that young Billy Bowen got up, looped a giant iron padlock round the front doors of Bowen Place, downed a single shot of whiskey at the saloon, saddled his horse, and plumb disappeared into the sunrise.

Many tales were later told of those years that Old Bill Bowen was gone, each more speculative than the next and all encouraged by his intensely private ways. Bill himself would never say a word about where he'd been or what came of it, so others were forced to improvise, and fell to the task with gusto. Go to the tavern even now and you'll hear all about his exploits going off to be a highway bandit in California, or enlisting to go and fight the Mexicans with the other famous Bill, or maybe it was the Seminoles. It was true in any case that he had an odd affinity for the Natives forever after, and always had a kind word for any Ute or Apache that drifted by on the northern road. Most unusual and not entirely appropriate for a Riverton man; by habit, they were not friendly with outsiders, especially not of the Injun variety. Riverton's frontier days were past, but memory was long. No one dared chide him for it. What did you do with a man like Old Bill? If he'd been quiet and queer before he left on his adventures, he was even more so when he came back. He spoke little, but there were mysteries wrapped in his dark eyes and a subtle danger painted into the weathered crook of his jawline. Younger folk with no memory of Billy the child told even taller tales of Old Bill and his adventures: Old Bill went to the jungles of Peru and fought a Woolly Oliphaunt; Old Bill traveled to the very gates of Hell and challenged the Devil to a duel on a silver fiddle. Other old-timers scoffed at such stories. No Riverton man would ever sign on for such a thing, not even one as singularly queer as Bill. Still, one story seemed as likely as the next, when it came down to it. Unless hell froze over and Bill himself spoke up about the matter, who could really say?

What was known pretty well was the manner of his return from those adventures, because just about the whole town was there to witness it for themselves. It happened on the very same day that his sister Libby, now Libby Sacks, finally despaired of his ever returning home, and announced over a pint of beer that she was going to go and take possession of the Bowen Place. Moreover, she intended to go through the house and auction off anything that still remained of Bill's to any interested party. Many shook their heads at such audacity from a female, but they definitely qualified as interested parties. The prospect of a Yard Sale at the Bowen Place was news enough for a year in the sleepy town of Riverton. By the time Libby herself made it up the hill, with a hefty pair of bolt cutters to cut the lock, quite a crowd had assembled round the front porch to see the spectacle. A hush fell over the onlookers as she set metal to dusty metal. Though Libby herself knew better (having grown up there) many of the assembled expected a treasure trove of fineries to emerge from the crumbling ranch house, perhaps to be bought or bartered or simply made off with.

But the very second that Libby sprung the bolt, the sound of a gunshot rang out from the rear of the assembly and stopped the event in its tracks. Gaping, the startled auctioneers spun about to stare at a most unexpected sight: six hefty mules loaded to the gills with saddlebags brimming with golden Spanish doubloons, led on a line by a short man on a fine brown destrier. He was garbed in the well-worn uniform of a US Cavalryman, and an odd belt adorned with a ornate golden buckle cinched his waist. A sabre hung at his side and as everyone watched, he silently returned an army pistol to its holster from where he had fired it into the sky, and dismounted. He was older, and leaner, and harder, but ten years of mysterious wanderings and a short sandy beard could not suffice to disguise his face completely. Old Bill Bowen, Billy no longer, had returned. 

No one spoke a word as Bill walked over to his front door and faced down his sister with an open palm, expectantly. A parade of expressions passed over Libby's face- relief, embarassment, anger- but she surrendered the bolt cutters without a comment. Bill tossed them off onto the brown grass and placed his hands on his hips. She seemed to be waiting for a greeting, and he seemed to be waiting for her to leave. They might have stood there for a while that way, but at that moment Olly Sacks burst from the crowd, red-faced. Things might have slid even further downhill from there, and indeed some of those who did not know Bill well later claimed to have seen his hand itch toward the pistol again. But even if that were so, it came to nothing; Olly just grabbed his sputtering wife by the arm and angrily dragged her back toward town. "Go on then", Old Bill finally spoke, and after a second it was clear he meant the watching audience, not his kin. He started making shooing motions, as though to sweep the uninvited guests bodily off the porch, and the crowd began to confusedly disperse and follow the Sacks clan back to Riverton main. One did not pick fights with an Adventurer. He shook his head, wiped his hands on his trousers as though to rid them of some unsightly stain, and walked into the house. The door shut, and things returned to normal for a very long time after.

There were those who feared that some of Old Bill Bowen's adventures might follow him back to Riverton, but it never happened. Nor, for the next few decades, did anything else. Those were dark days for most of the world, but the troubles never seemed to quite reach Riverton's doorstep, and they paid them little mind. They preferred it that way, safe and isolated from the affairs of nations, and concerned mostly with local society affairs unless forced to do otherwise. If over the years a handful of youths replayed Bill's escape and left to see the world at large, none of them ever returned as he had, or indeed returned at all. Some of the odder folks coming down the highway seemed to know something of Riverton's oldest and strangest inhabitant, but would refuse to elaborate. Were seldom asked in any case, as the townfolk didn't cotton much to talking to strangers, not even to settle old curiosities. Bill took up his hatshaping business, went for long walks in the hills at times, and hired the Gamgee boys to help with the repairs and tend a growing herd of horses and donkeys. Mostly, he kept to himself and said not a word about the Yard Sale or anything else from that time. In time, only Libby and her friends had anything ill to say of him, for though peculiar, he'd brought no trouble after all and was generous with his perhaps ill-gotten treasure. And a decent haberdasher to boot, as it turned out. Most assumed that whatever whimsy had once whisked Old Bill away, he was over it now, and that those once-distressing events could be retired to the much more comfortable categories of memory and rumor.

In time, it was almost forgotten that Bill Bowen was the same Old Bill who starred in the fanciful stories of the children, or that he had ever truly left and and come back so remarkably. An increasing number of the folk who'd seen it had passed on, and their offspring cared more about the normal affairs of the village than about any oddities that had occurred in their parent's time. At least until the day of the Party.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The saga continues. Bill makes an unexpected acquaintance.

**Chapter One**

Between the time of the Yard Sale and the Party, Old Bill was the source of but one scandal. Not the biggest Scandal, but enough to turn a few heads. That was the adoption of Fred Bowen, and it happened like this. 

It was not an event that anyone would have predicted, least of all for whom it involved. Bill kept few friends in his elder years, though he kept them well, and never showed any inclination toward marriage. It was assumed by all and sundry that when Bill finally passed on, the house would go to his nephew Luther and nothing more would be said of it. He was in his seventies by then, and certainly Luther himself expected that his inheritance would be coming before too much longer. An adoption, at that age, was unheard of. And though Bill was admittedly spry-looking for his advanced age, no man lives forever.

So it took everyone by surprise when he suddenly took on a ward, and eventually a son. Freddy was not a relative in blood as far as anyone knew. Not that anyone did know much, since Freddy was just a street urchin; a bedraggled, desperate little thing who came in stumbling off the southern trail one day, as more and more seemed to do. He was just a slip of a boy, dirty, ragged, mats in his wild hair. He'd taken up a station outside the saloon, begging quietly and hopelessly for his supper. No one ever did learn his story. His solitude suggested an orphan at least, but the poor waif was too young and too traumatized to tell his own tragic story in much detail, if indeed he remembered the circumstances of it at all.

Now don't be thinking too harshly of the folk of Riverton. They were not without heart, and its likely that had little Freddy still been there in the morning, the men would have staggered back to their wives and homes with the tale, the hens would have begun to cluck, and before long he would soon have been taken in by one of the bigger families - the Brandybrooks, or the Proudfoots, maybe - there to become a "cousin" among cousins within the growing brood. 

But as it happened, Old Bill got there first. Gramp Gamgee saw the whole thing, peering out the window of the tavern as he was, and waiting for Bill to show. It was their custom to share a game of Checkers on Friday afternoons, and like clockwork, Bill appeared at the end of the street at exactly five, all dressed in a vest and a ranching duster and hair combed back beneath a well-worn hat according to his habits. He walked right past the diminutive beggar at first, not giving any indication that he had seen the lad, and vanished through the tavern door. But then, says Gramp, he suddenly paused in the entryway, patting his vest-pockets as though he'd forgotten something and would be obliged to go back for it.

Old Bill walked back outside and paused by the spot where the boy was sitting, sticklike legs tucked beneath him to form an even smaller shape. Bill stood there a minute longer, betraying nothing. Thumbs hooked over his belt, he gazed out at the sun, then to the ground for a bit. The boy shuffled nervously. Bill peered down out of the corner of his eye finally, as though only vaguely interested. Freddy looked up hopefully. Bill gave up and turned to face him properly, bending over so he could look at the boy eye to eye. They remained in that position for a minute or two more, mutually regarding each other. Bill squinted. Fred's mouth was agape. Bill closed it with a finger. Then he sighed, straightened, and held out a hand. Whatever he'd been searching for in those big brown eyes, it can only be assumed that he found it. "Come on then", said Bill, and the boy and the old man walked back into the tavern together.

It would be stretching the tale to say that the place fell silent as they entered, but more than one curious eyebrow cocked in their direction as Bill lifted the tiny boy onto a barstool and ordered him a glass of goat's milk. More because of the source, you understand, than the act. The quiet old rancher who few knew much of, taking pity on a common street urchin? But Bill and Fred drank together, and left together, and even Gramp Gamgee didn't have the heart to complain about the forgotten game of Checkers. The next time anyone saw hide or hair of Freddy Bowen it was at the May Fair two weeks later. Old Bill had set up his hattery table as usual and was sitting there waiting for customers, and seated beside him as easily as if he'd always belonged there was the boy. Fred was barely recognizeable, his hair combed and his face scrubbed. A soft blue jacket, oversized for his small frame, had been amended to serve as a duster. He had a small, shy smile and murmured a polite hello to many curious visitors as they stopped by. They didn't sell many hats that day, but they certainly made an impression. "An apprentice", Bill said briefly to anyone who asked, but it wasn't long before all the society ladies were referring to Freddy as "the young Master Bowen" and treating him as befitted the scion of an old estate, even before it was properly announced some time later. 

Not all took strictly kind to the boy's appearance in the town's life, of course. Libby and her husband would tell tales to anyone who would listen, most of them centering on the whispered allegation that the boy was Bill's son in truth, and thus a bastard ineligible to inherit. Most of the town paid them no particular mind. That Bill had taken the boy in was not a mystery that needed solving, not when they were so obviously alike in temperament. Quiet and sober but not unkind; book lovers and horse whisperers; hell, they even shared a birthday, if that wasn't some polite fable of Bill's. You never could tell with Old Bill, and the boy only grew more like him as they aged. In any case, everyone liked Fred too well to begrudge him the estate in any case, and it's not as though there was law in the town in those days beyond what proud men spoke and their wives agreed to (or sometimes the other way round). Fred himself was quiet, but more sociable than his father and his presence had a mellowing affect even on the older man's conduct. They showed up in church more Sundays than not, and Fred Bowen quickly won the regard of the townfolk. Like Old Bill himself but without all the mysteries and hard edges, his soft birdlike voice popping up with a gay "amen" whenever the preacher paused for effect. By the time he'd come to adolescence, Freddy had the eye of many of the young ladies, and not just because of his money. No one was surprised when he took over the May Fair duties one year, and he was a fixture in the town by the time of his sixteenth birthday, his coming-of-age year, and of course, the Party.


End file.
